Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States of America (1963–1969). After serving in the House and Senate since 1937, Johnson was elected Vice President in 1960, and in November, 1963, he succeeded to the presidency following President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Johnson began his career as a liberal New Dealer, later when he became a senator he initially aligned himself with the Southern Democrats, although by the time he ascended to Senate Leadership he espoused moderate politics in an attempt to bridge both wings of the fractious Democratic Party. However, as President he seized the leadership of liberalism citing Franklin D. Roosevelt as his role model. Johnson moved the Democratic Party to the left, and pushed through Congress the Great Society, comprising liberal economic policy including Medicare (free health care for the elderly), Medicaid (free health care for the poor), aid to education, and a major "War on Poverty". As part of his jobs program he greatly escalated the American troop strength in Vietnam through conscription, from 16,000 in 1963 to 23,000 by the end of 1964 and finally to 550,000 by early 1968. Unemployment consequently, remained in check.

Johnson won reelection in a landslide in 1964 over conservative leader Barry Goldwater, and in 1965 succeeded in obtaining new civil rights legislation with GOP senators, in particular the Voting Rights Act of 1965, over a Democratic Filibuster. Johnson's popularity steadily declined after 1966 and his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of turmoil in his Democratic party over conscription, race, Vietnam and widespread crime and rioting. He withdrew from the race to concentrate on peacemaking. Johnson was renowned for his domineering personality and arm twisting of powerful politicians.

Contents

Early years

Johnson was maternally descended from a pioneer Baptist clergyman, George Washington Baines, who pastored numerous small rural churches in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Baines was also the president of Baylor University during the American Civil War. George Baines was the grandfather of Johnson's mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson.

Johnson was born in Stonewall, Texas, in a small farmhouse in a poor farming area along the Pedernales River. His parents, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. and the former Rebekah Baines, had three girls and two boys. The nearby village of Johnson City, Texas, was named after a relative who came from Georgia. In school, Johnson was an awkward, talkative youth and was elected president of his eleventh-grade class.[1] He graduated from Johnson City High School in 1924.[2]

In 1926, Johnson enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers' College (now called Texas State University-San Marcos). He worked his way through school, participated in debate and campus politics, edited the school newspaper, and graduated in 1931. Biographer Robert Caro asserts he was known as "the biggest liar on campus." [3] The college years refined his remarkable skills of persuasion and political organization. One year Johnson taught mostly Mexican American children at the Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas. When he returned to San Marcos in 1965, after having signed the Higher Education Act, Johnson looked back:

"I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this Nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American."[4]

Early political career

After graduation, Johnson briefly taught public speaking at Genesee Community College and debate in a Houston high school, then entered politics. Johnson's father had served five terms in the Texas legislature and was a close friend to one of Texas's rising political figures, Congressman Sam Rayburn. In 1930, Johnson campaigned for Texas state Senator Welly Hopkins in his run for Congress. Hopkins recommended him to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg, who appointed Johnson as Kleberg's legislative secretary. LBJ was elected speaker of the "Little Congress," a group of Congressional aides, where he cultivated Congressmen, newspapermen and lobbyists. Johnson's friends soon included aides to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as fellow Texans such as Vice President John Nance Garner. He became a surrogate son to Sam Rayburn.

Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor (already nicknamed "Lady Bird") of Karnack, Texas on November 17, 1934 after she had attended Georgetown University Law School for several months. They had two daughters, Lynda Bird Johnson, born in 1944, and Luci Baines Johnson, born in 1947. Johnson enjoyed giving people and animals his own LBJ initials; his daughters' given names are examples, as was his dog Little Beagle Johnson.

In 1935, he was appointed head of the Texas National Youth Administration (NYA), which enabled him to use the government to create educational and job opportunities for young people. He resigned two years later to run for Congress. Johnson was a notoriously tough boss throughout his career, often demanding long workdays and work on weekends; he worked as hard as any of them.[5]

House years

Johnson resigned from his NYA job in 1937 to run successfully in a special election for a seat in the House of Representatives representing Austin and the surrounding Hill Country. He ran on a New Deal platform and was effectively aided by his wife, Lady Bird Johnson.

President Roosevelt found Johnson to be a welcome ally and conduit for information, particularly with regards to issues concerning internal politics in Texas (informally dubbed "Operation Texas") and the machinations of Vice President Garner and House Speaker Sam Rayburn. Johnson was immediately appointed to the powerful Naval Affairs Committee. He worked for rural electrification and other improvements for his district. Johnson steered the projects towards contractors which he personally knew, such as the Brown Brothers, Herman and George, who would finance much of Johnson's future career.[6] In 1941, he ran for the U.S. Senate (while not giving up his House seat) in a special election against the sitting governor, radio personality W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel. Johnson was not expected to win against the popular governor, but he ran a strong race and was declared the winner in unofficial returns. He ultimately was defeated by controversial official returns in an election marked by massive fraud on the part of both campaigns.

Senate years

In 1948, Johnson ran in another controversial Senate race, this time against former governor Coke Stevenson. After no candidate won a majority of the votes in the election, Johnson defeated Stevenson in a run-off election. The result of this election was highly controversial, most historians, even those sympathetic to Johnson consider Johnson's 87 vote victory over Stevenson to be fraudulent.[7] After joining the Senate, Johnson established relationships with several senior senators, including Richard Russell. Johnson was appointed to the powerful Armed Services Committee in 1950, and became chairman of the Preparedness Subcommittee which brought him into the public spotlight much like Harry Truman used the "Truman Committee" during the Second World War. He was named minority whip in 1951 under Democratic leader Bob McFarland, and he became the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate in 1953. His first major policy, with the support of Russell, was to bypass the Seniority rule in committee assignments, which meant that Senators became reliant on his favour in order to obtain positions on important committees. This move, in combination with his strong personality gave him power of senators that had not been seen before (or since) in Senate History. He is often referred to as the "Master of the Senate". Surprisingly, after he bacame majority leader in 1955 he supported many of Eisenhower's proposals despite the partisan resistance of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. This allowed him to bask in the reflected glow of Eisenhower's immense popularity and gain a reputation for working across the aisle and getting things done.

Although publicly posing as a Civil Rights hero, in private Johnson was—like most southern Democrats of the 1960s—a racist: When his sometime chauffeur, Robert Parker, told LBJ he’d prefer to be called by his name rather than "boy," "nigger" or "chief," Johnson replied, "As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture."[8]

In his capacity as Majority Leader of the Senate, Johnson joined with Strom Thurmond to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1957. But when Senate Republicans re-introduced the bill, LBJ said, "I'm going to have to bring up the nigger bill again," according to LBJ's White House Special Counsel Harry McPherson.[9] "Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass," he told Senator John Stennis (D-MS), according to a Pulitzer Prize winning[10] biography.[11] According to Bancroft Prize winning[12] biographer Robert Dallek, he asked Senator Sam Rayburn (D-TX), "Sam, why don't you all let this nigger bill pass?"[13] According to former Harvard historian and Johnson staffer Doris Kearns Goodwin, LBJ explained his position to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) thus:

“

These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.[14]

”

Johnson saw to it that once the bill reached the Senate judiciary committee it was weakened enough to ensure passage, the first passed since Reconstruction. Johnson then took credit. He was a master at balancing the powerful southern wing of the Democratic party with the liberal northern and eastern wing. He would employ very effective tactics of persuasion with senators; including intimidation, flattery, threats and promises. Johnson sought the Democratic nomination for president prior to the 1960 election, but accepted the nomination for vice-president following Kennedy's nomination.

Presidency

Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn into the Office of the President just hours after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The Oath of Office took place aboard Air Force One just prior to the flight to Washington DC from Dallas. It was administered by Sarah T. Hughes (one of the first justices to hear and write the decision for Roe v. Wade in favor of abortion).[15] Also, since no Bible could be found aboard Air Force One, Johnson recited the oath with his hand on a Roman Catholicmissal which had been in Kennedy's desk.[16] Largely because of the KGB's disinformation campaign shortly after the JFK assassination, Johnson was often believed by conspiracy theorists to have been the one who arranged for Kennedy's assassination to get into the presidency. However, declassified CIA documents in 2015 that dated back to the assassination revealed that Johnson learned from the CIA that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been getting visas for escape from the country via Cuba and the Soviet Union only three days after the assassination occurred, making this motive unlikely.[17]

As President, Johnson greatly expanded the federal government with his Great Society programs. He played a key role in helping the civil rights movement win legislative victories, pushing for the adoption of the Civil Rights Act (1964), which outlawed segregation, and the Voting Rights Act (1965), which guaranteed African-Americans' right to vote. President Johnson's support for civil rights was purely partisan. Discussing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with two southern governors on Air Force One, LBJ stated, “I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years,” according to Air Force One steward Robert M. MacMillan. “That was the reason he was pushing the bill," added MacMillan, an African American, "not because he wanted equality for everyone. It was strictly a political ploy for the Democratic Party. He was phony from the word go.”[18]

Johnson also appointed NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall the first African American Supreme Court Justice. When a young White House attorney recommended Federal Judge William Henry Hastie—who had been Marshall's professor at Harvard Law School—as a more qualified African American candidate, LBJ rejected the light-skinned Hastie, explaining, "Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger."[19]

Johnson won the 1964 presidential election in a landslide over Goldwater but, ironically, greatly expanded American involvement in Vietnam (see Vietnam War). In November of 1965, during a meeting with his Joint Chiefs, after stating how they could mine the North Vietnamese ports as well as do massive aerial strikes on Hanoi to prevent Soviet or other Communist aid from going into the region, although Johnson seemingly acted receptive, he then turned around and started screaming various obscenities, including using the f-word more freely as an adjective than a Marine at boot camp, and told them he was disgusted with their naivety and made clear that he wasn't going to let "military idiots" drag him into World War III before bluntly dismissing them by telling them to "get the hell out of [Johnson's] office!"[20] His popularity plunged as the death toll from the conflict in Vietnam steadily increased. In early 1968, faced with plummeting poll numbers and mounting public opposition to his foreign policy, Johnson announced that he would neither seek nor accept his party's nomination for the presidency in 1968. This decision may have been brought about by his supprisingly narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary over Eugene McCarthy, a liberal anti-war Democrat. It is widely thought that had he run, he would have been trounced in the primaries or in the subsequent general election—eventually won by Republican Richard M. Nixon.

Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1997)

Casey, Francis Michael. The Vietnam Policy of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in Response to the Theory of the Protracted Conflict as Applied in the Politics of Indochina: A Case Study of Threat Perception and Assessment in the Crisis Management Process of a Pluralistic Society. (Claremont Graduate School, 1976)

Cherwitz, Richard Arnold. The Rhetoric of the Gulf of Tonkin: A Study of the Crisis Speaking of President Lyndon B. Johnson. (University of Iowa, 1978)

↑Dallek, Robert (1991). Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 519. ISBN 0195054350. Hastie had previously been considered for the Court by Eisenhower in 1956, who shelved the idea because Hastie's nomination would have been "filibustered to death by Southerners on the floor of the Senate" (All 22 southern Senators at the time were white Democrats); and again in 1962 by Kennedy, who rejected him after white liberals -- Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William O. Douglas -- objected that Hastie, an African American, was too conservative (As Warren put it, "He's not a liberal, and he'll be opposed to the measures we're interested in.") During World War II, Hastie had laid the groundwork for the 1947 integration of the US armed forces when he resigned as aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimson in protest of segregated training in the US Army Air Force for the Tuskeegee Airmen.

↑Cheers and Tears: A Marine's Story of Combat in Peace and War (2002).